I thought I’d tell you about my personal sustainability journey so you have a better idea of how I got to this point in my life. You’ll see that my journey has not been perfect! I’ve had ups and downs, but always found my way back to trying to protect the Earth and be conscious of my impact. I hope this reassures you that there’s no one right way to live sustainably or that if you get off track there is still hope.
Early Years
I still remember the first time I thought about my own impact on the planet. I was only about 5 years old and I was watching one of my favorite shows, Gullah Gullah Island. Do any fellow 90’s kids remember it? If you’ve never seen it, it’s about a family, the Alstons, living on an island off the coast of South Carolina, and their friends on the island. One of their friends is a frog named Binyah Binyah.
In the episode I remember so distinctly, Binyah Binyah comes to the Alstons’ house crying because he’s gotten one of his feet stuck in a soda ring. The Alstons have to cut the soda ring off of his foot. They then tell the kids watching that they can help keep this from happening to any animals by cutting up soda rings before throwing them in the trash. (I have tried so many times to find this scene on YouTube & I can’t!)
Of course, I immediately told my mom we had to start cutting up our soda rings! She kindly obliged and let me cut them up before they went in the trash. I have cut up six-pack rings of all kinds before throwing them away ever since. This is the thru-line on my journey — the one thing I always did no matter what else I was or wasn’t doing or where I was in my life.
I took an environmental science class my senior year of high school, which I really enjoyed and started to open my mind, but I was so consumed with getting ready for college and trying to make it through my last year of high school that it didn’t go much further.
College Years
I lived in the dorms the first two years of college and, at the time, there wasn’t recycling in the dorms (luckily now my alma mater is a leader in sustainability on college campuses). When I was able to move into an apartment, I started recycling. It wasn’t easy. I had to take the recycling to a drop-off center and sort it there since I didn’t have room in my apartment for more than a single container to collect it in and my apartment complex didn’t have recycling. It was hit-and-miss, to be honest, and sometimes it didn’t happen.
I moved into my own house for graduate school and between working, classes, and homework, recycling went out the window. I always tried to take my reusable bags to the grocery store, though! I had very little food waste since I was on a tight budget.
As you can see, I have not always prioritized sustainable living. I always had an undercurrent of caring about nature and the planet, but it wasn’t until recently that it really came to the surface.
Turning Point
Over the last few years I had been becoming more conscious of climate change and the need for me to live more sustainably and make more sustainable choices. The turning point for me came when I got the chance to go to Hawaii for 10 days in 2019.
I had been to the ocean in Florida when I was young, but I didn’t remember it well and hadn’t been since (I live & grew up in New Mexico and went to college in Kansas — not quite oceanfront property). I’d been watching a lot of NOVA on PBS and reading about plastic pollution before the trip.
I had also tried to find some recycling options, but the closest was a little over an hour’s drive away (now the closest is 2 hours away). My parents weren’t quite on board yet, either, which was important since I lived with them.
I got to go to Hawaii for a work conference, otherwise I never would’ve been able to go. My parents decided to go to Hawaii with me. It would end up being a turning point for them as well, particularly my dad. I had gotten my mom on board a bit with trying to reduce our plastic consumption already, but my dad wasn’t there yet.
I was in awe of the beauty of Hawaii. We got to stay at an oceanfront hotel in both Waikiki & Kauai and close to the ocean in Maui. My mom and I spent a lot of time on the beach in Kauai, and plastic pollution was evident everywhere. There were also people who just left their trash and cigarette butts in the sand instead of walking the 5 feet to a trash can!!! (Is it obvious that really irritated me?)
We did a behind-the-scenes tour at the Maui Ocean Center, which I can’t recommend enough if you ever have the chance. I got to feed sea turtles (we just dropped the food in, don’t worry!), and we saw some of the debris they had picked up on one of their trips out to the ocean.
Our tour guide also told us about how many straws people use around the world in a day and that was her one easy thing you could do to help with the ocean plastic problem. I bought my first bamboo straws later that day at the Pacific Whale Foundation gift shop.
When we returned from Hawaii I had a new passion & commitment to trying to reduce my impact on the planet, and my use of single-use plastic in particular. My dad also had a new appreciation for plastic reduction and environmental issues. He was more open to recycling, even though it meant transporting it to another town, and thought more about sustainability.
It’s been a journey for he and my mom as well, but they continue to make progress. I hope that encourages those of you who may live with people who aren’t fully on-board with the changes you want to make in your life. I’ve found that having kind conversations and just being a sustainable influence for people can change their behavior over time.
I found TerraCycle and signed up for as many brigades as I could. We set up a recycling station at home and would take recycling whenever we or someone we knew was traveling to or through the town with recycling. We never did just a recycling trip because the carbon footprint of gas seemed to me to defeat the purpose of the recycling. I started to find some more single-use plastic swaps and tried to implement them when I could. My biggest investment in sustainable living has been buying a PHEV.
My journey is still on-going and I am still trying to figure out how to live sustainably on a budget. It’s ok if your sustainability journey ebbs and flows like mine has. We all have different struggles in life and sometimes we aren’t able to add anything else to them. YOU CAN ALWAYS START AGAIN! Even if you haven’t made an eco-friendly choice in months or years, you can start making them again.
I am committed to making this blog accessible for all, but I am new to website building. If you find something that isn’t accessible for you, please send an email with details about it to haley@sustainablyhaley.com and I will do my best to fix it.
